A reflection from Martin Ericson

Little by little, one goes far.

All Saints’ of 2024 is a far cry from the church I came to in the early 1980’s.

Others may remember worshipping at St. James in Kannapolis and the former All Saints’ location in downtown Concord. I can’t imagine the vision and effort needed to plant the seed for a new building here on Lake Concord Road.

I am sure that the ‘new’ All Saints’ in 1972 was wonderful. Over the years, however, we outgrew the facility: the much smaller parish hall, the galley kitchen with residential stove and dishwasher, just a few classrooms, and limited office space.

Through the vision of others and several expansion phases, our beautiful current facility can accommodate different worship styles and numerous group activities throughout the week.

With expanded facilities come increased needs for maintenance and upkeep. Part of the reason All Saints’ can keep both its inward and outward-reaching mission is the countless hours volunteers spend in this effort. Much of this is invisible to the congregation, only recognized if it is not done.

Little things like the finished piece of wood on the lectern to hold the lectionary book at a proper height for our lay readers at the 11:10 AM service. To bigger things like the platform for the altar in the Parish Hall. I watched a group of woodworkers from our congregation meeting to discuss how it should be constructed. A good thing that they had the use of their hands, or the discussion would have been more difficult.

To major things like the redesign of the altar area in the nave to make it much more accessible for those coming up for communion.

And a million and one other items of repair or maintenance. I found one of our volunteers circulating a cleaning solution through our tankless water heaters to remove scaling that took hours. Something that would have been a great expense if done by a plumber.

In addition to taking care of immediate needs, a long-term maintenance plan has been created.

Some names of members of our congregation who do this maintenance work come to mind, but I am sure for each one I could name, there are two others who are unknown to me.

Without these people, we would not have such a nice place in which to worship and grow.

We should all be grateful for them. 

-Martin Ericson, Sr. Warden